1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer-implemented systems and methods for self-service management of Accounts Receivables (AR) over a computer network, such as the Internet. This invention also relates to computer-implemented and Internet-based systems and methods for the disputing one or several invoices in a deploying company's AR system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Each year, analysts project increased growth in both the volume and the value of online transactions over the World Wide Web (hereafter, the “Web”). Every year, the actual volume and value of the goods and services transacted over the Web has exceeded these projections. As the world becomes increasingly mobile, wireless and connected, seamless and complete Web connectivity has revealed itself to be central to processing transactions faster, easier, at lower costs and at higher profit margins.
The increasing ubiquity of the Web in commercial transactions has led companies to examine their business processes closely, to evaluate their effectiveness and to develop possible improvements. Accounts Receivables is one area that has yet to benefit from a comprehensive overhaul to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the Internet. Indeed, AR is conventionally handled by a variety of means, the most fundamental being the paper invoice sent by a vendor to its customer. Customers need to manage their AR accounts with each vendor, although they may not perceive their actions as AR management. Traditionally, such AR management includes contacting the vendor's customer service or collections department over the telephone, email or facsimile for each question and each request. The vendor would then retrieve the customer's data and perform some action, whether it is to provide the customer with a copy of an invoice or create and process a Credit Memo Request, for example. Other common customer requests and questions include requests for an account balance, inquiries related to payments being applied to invoices, requests for amounts past due, inquiries asking whether all credits have been applied to the proper account, for example. Responding to these requests and questions is traditionally a burdensome manual process for both parties involved in the transaction. The vendor must dedicate substantial HR resources to their AR department and the customer expends time and money repeatedly performing transactions that do not positively contribute to their bottom line.
This administrative burden, moreover, disproportionably rests on the shoulders of the vendor, as it must repeatedly collect, process and analyze data provided by each of its customers in order to satisfy the customers' requests or respond to the customers' questions. However, as between the customer and the vendor, it is the customer that often has the superior (most accurate, most up to date) information. Indeed, the customer knows why she deserves a credit or knows which invoice is duplicate, for example. There is believed to have been a long felt need, therefore, for methods and systems that enable customers self-service access to their AR information. Self-service access to AR information would improve communications between customer and vendor, would reduce costs and improve both the quality and timeliness of the services provided. Enabling self-service access to vendor AR information would decrease the administrative burden of fielding the wide range of customer requests and questions and would improve collections and cash flow and enable the vendor to focus on strategy, rather than administration. When an organization is focused on strategy, rather than on trying to keep up with volume of data entry and customer requests, costs decrease and efficiency increases. Eventually, a smaller percent of the vendor's time may be spent on transaction control and processing, and more time may be spent on activity planning, optimizing, and analyzing. Thus, by enabling self-service access to AR information and by correspondingly freeing up data processing resources, the vendors' finance departments may undergo a transformation from a mere processing center to a full-fledged strategic planning center.
Self-service access to AR information, however, would only free the vendor from the more mundane tasks traditionally associated with responding to customers' inquiries and questions. The resolution of invoice and account disputes constitutes another significant drain on human resources within a typical AR department. Indeed, customers must be able to communicate disputes to their vendors. Such disputes must be tracked and resolved. Traditionally, customers would “manage” such disputes indirectly: they would call the vendor's sales representative, customer service or collections department and verbally explain the nature of the dispute. Such a dispute processing methodology is wasteful in both time and resources to both parties to the dispute. What are needed, therefore, are methods and systems to allow customers to initiate disputes without active manual involvement form the vendor.